Everything faded away in a whirl of smoke and verdant green, leaving only a blank grey space where I stood frozen in time. My body wouldn’t listen to any of the commands I gave it, and I had to stand there with my arms at my sides and my knees locked underneath me. I felt like a suit of armor on display in some old king’s hallway, an intimidating but ultimately useless presence.

“What’s happening?” I muttered to myself, my voice now working for some reason. But it echoed around my head, feeling like it was trapped inside my helmet instead of being let out. “Am I dead?”

A small ball of light shimmered into being a good ten feet away, slowly shifting and growing until it was vaguely human-shaped. Armor then began building itself on top of the light, a thin layer of neon blue that was quickly covered by deep green and off-white plates that gave the sense that this armor had been forged by Poseidon himself.

I didn’t recognize the armor whatsoever, and I had a pretty good idea of all the powerful people’s armor. This had to be some random person who’d squirreled themselves away while some of us fought to carve out a future in the hazard-ridden world we’d found ourselves in.

The armor shuddered and screeched as it was shorn away from the light inside, now made of flesh and blood that grasped at itself in horror. A shuddering scream escaped from the helmet, and the armor fell to its knees while it cradled its destroyed stomach. I winced in sympathy and tried to look away, regretting my earlier thoughts as the man inside tore his armor off piece by piece and checked to see if they were still alive.

“How am I…” He muttered, tears running down his face as he patted and prodded at his stomach that showed through a very ragged undershirt.

“You aren’t, my boy.” Another voice rumbled, an extremely muscular man with empty eyes and silver-veined skin suddenly comforting the man on his knees. “But you did well. I was right to choose you.”

Choose him? If the man currently kneeling was one of the chosen, then that meant that he was at least partially responsible for what was about to happen. But then… why was I here? Unless I didn’t know I’d been chosen, and I’d have a muscular man comforting me soon. Hell, maybe that smoke had killed me and I was the reason the system was resetting.

“Tarel? What am I doing here?” The man on his knees asked, tears falling from his cheeks to splatter on an invisible floor beneath him. “If I…” he gulped, “if I died, how come I’m still here?”

The big man, Tarel, patted his hand against the fallen man’s back with a burst of silver dust. It swirled like snow around the fallen man before infusing into his skin, giving it a silver glow like a very muted version of Tarel’s own.

“Because this was merely a trial, Garrett. To see if you were truly worthy of representing me on the staging grounds of history.” Tarel said comfortingly, which made my stomach turn. This was all a trial? The friends and family I’d lost? The friends and family I’d made, and was now about to lose? All for the sake of a… test run?

My arm strained against my armor and I pushed as hard as I could. I felt the armor creaking up at a glacial pace, and I knew it was futile, but I didn’t stop. I needed to get these people’s attention. Maybe they could help me.

Garrett went to speak, but Tarel shushed him. “If you want to represent the Embodiment of will, you must push forward. Do not speak, try not to think, and do not move. Our time is limited only by your actions, so inaction will let me explain to you everything that is about to happen.”

Garrett stiffened and started to nod, but caught himself under Tarel’s withering glare.

“Very good.” Tarel said quickly. “I’ll make this first portion as quick as possible, as the changes from the last time we spoke are very minimal. Clear the hazards, save or deal with the people of your new world, and carve a foothold for the people of earth. That has not changed, save for the introduction of quite a few native people. We removed them this first time around, as it would be an unnecessary strain on our chosen, but they will be very much real this time.”

Tarel crossed his arms and drummed his fingers against his elbows in what looked like thought. “Which leads us here. To the point where I tell you about the world that is to come, and of the path you should take. To emerge victorious over the hazards, with many following your glorious banner of silver light.”

Wonderful. The guy who looked and talked like a god casually remarked about murdering an entire people to make what I just went through a little easier on me. On everyone who got pulled into this hellscape. I thought of finding my parents’ bodies, dead of old age and nothing more, with a tattered letter from my younger brother telling me that he’d gone west to search for meaning in our new meaningless world.

I never found him, and eventually I had to stop looking. The new world was beyond gigantic, and my brother said he planned to travel alone. Maybe if I’d abandoned my friends I could have found him, but I hadn’t seen him in twenty five years at that point. I’d lived longer without him in my life than with him in it.

I shook my head and focused on the words of Tarel once more, kicking myself for missing out on what could have been important information.

“And you will need allies on this new path of yours.” Tarel said grandly, gesturing emphatically in my direction. I felt my heart swell with hope, following Garrett’s gaze to see my friends’ armor spread out to my left and right. Tarel stepped up to the furthest suit, the one that had belonged to Poe, placing a hand on its shoulder and turning his head back to look at Garrett.

“Penelope MacDonald, the Apothecary. She bears the Soul Bottle, a unique core that grants her the ability to pause and twist the effects of consumables indefinitely until she, or her allies, needs them. With her, you will never waste a single point of health or battery. The support to end all supports.”

Tarel stepped to Dee, who was positioned between me and Poe. “Damian Ilovich, the Watcher. A man who loves his drink more than he loves his family. His unique core, the Eye of the Watcher, made him the only non-chosen to ever discover our existence. He’s the best scout you’ll find in either world, as long as you can get him away from alcohol for long enough that his words begin coming out clear.”

“Fuck you.” I spat, my words ringing around my helmet uselessly. Damian hadn’t touched a single drop after his family died in the razing. To hear this ‘embodiment’ demeaning him made my blood boil. But there was nothing I could do about it.

After bad-mouthing Damian, I expected that Tarel would come to me next. What I wasn’t expecting was for him to pass me over completely without even a single glance, moving on to Vim on my left.

“Viviana Aguilar, the Fortunate. Her core, the Faraway Star Orrery, grants her the ability to manipulate probability. I shouldn’t have to tell you how astronomically powerful that ability can be.”

Once more, Tarel didn’t even look at me. He went straight to Ali, and the expression on his face was anything but happy. “Finally, there is Arthur Lifeson, the Echo. His core is Skipping Lightning, and his power is strange but irrefutable. I myself cannot tell you how his core works, as it was a relic of the new world, but know that he will always find it. You won’t find a more powerful core for purely offensive uses if you searched for ten decades.”

Tarel stepped in front of me and blocked my view of Garrett, then turned so I couldn’t see either of their expressions. His muscles bulged under too-tight skin, beads of bright silver travelling along his veins like ball bearings being sucked through tiny straws. It was sickening to watch, yet also oddly hypnotizing.

Silence stretched on, and I could almost feel Garrett’s curiosity in me growing. Tarel’s body language grew more and more impatient, his back and neck tensing and his left foot began tapping against the non-existent floor. It felt like it took almost ten minutes, but eventually Garrett broke the silence with a gasp for breath and a spewing of words with almost no pause between them.

“If all those people are important, then who’s that behind you?” He said within one second, his mouth clamping shut so quickly that I heard his teeth slam together.

“A very good question.” Tarel laughed, lifting his arm and beckoning Garrett to come closer. “This…” Tarel said as he turned around to face me, silver teeth shimmering inside a too-wide smile. My stomach turned at that look, and anger flooded my limbs as three more words spilled out around a molten silver tongue.

“This is you.”

An impossibly strong hand touched my chest, and the breath was stolen from my lungs. I tried once again to scream for help; to get either the Embodiment or his chosen to acknowledge my existence, but then something more was stolen from me. Tarel cradled a small cube in his palm, a jet-black thing with breathing purple runes etched into its surface that I'd seen an untold amount of times before.

It was my core. And with a gentle push against my chest, Tarel turned to Garrett and presented to him my core. Everything went fuzzy as my armor began to dissociate, then complete blackness overtook me. I'd been thrown away like trash now that Tarel had taken the one thing he wanted from me.

//SYSTEM RESET IN PROGRESS

//ERROR: //NULL CORE

//CORE: OBSIDIAN CONUNDRUM COULD NOT BE LOADED

//OWNERSHIP HAS CHANGED

I wrenched my eyes open to a spinning vortex of every colour I could recognize, and a good handful that I didn’t. The system messages were in the corner of my vision, but I didn’t have my helmet on. I felt an emptiness in my chest where my core always was, but I guess it wasn’t my core any more. It was Garrett’s.

So what did that mean for me? Was I dying because I didn’t have anything to keep my blood pumping? I held my hands up to my chest, but there was nothing there. No hands, no chest, and no me. It hurt to think, since I guess I didn’t have a brain anymore either. I closed my eyes and watched the error messages scroll by as my consciousness slowly faded away into what felt like a dreamless sleep.

//ERROR

//ERROR

//WAKE UP SEBASTIAN

//ERROR

//ERROR

//ERROR

//BE REBORN IN THE //NULL

I slid my hand down my face to wipe the sleep away, reaching out with one hand to scroll through my interface to check if I’d slept enough. My fingers missed completely, not finding anything hard enough to press on, and I slumped forwards with a startled yelp.

“What the hell?” I muttered. The last time my interface didn’t come up with one thought was when I’d been bitten in half by an oversized rat, and Vim had to waste half a crate of healing juice to keep me from bleeding out while she reattached my legs.

I wiggled my toes to dismiss that possibility and scratched my face, feeling a beard adorning my cheeks and chin that scratched back at my fingers. Last time I checked, I didn’t have a beard. And I definitely hadn’t been in that hazard long enough to grow anything more than a 5 o’clock shadow, nevermind the scraggly thing that hung off of me.

Throwing the covers off my bed and slipping my hand down to the repurposed bathroom stool I used as a side-table to grab my glasses, I stumbled over Jimmy and made my way to the bathroom. I had classes today and an interface on the fritz, which was just a little too much for an old man like me.

//ERROR. AGE MISCALCULATED.

The message in the bottom right of my eye stopped me dead in my tracks. I was… an old man? No, no, that couldn’t be right. I was twenty-one. Just old enough to drink, and in my third year of community college. But… no. The razing. The hazards. My friends that I’d known longer than… than I’d been alive. It couldn’t have all been a dream. And the message that was glitching and freaking out in the corner of my eye assured me of that.

The haze of sleep was washed out of my mind as I rushed to the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind me, my back turned to the mirror while I worked up the courage to check my face.